bumper stickers, blackbeltfactory and other user personalizations (jforum day 2011)

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Today is exactly two years since the launch of our Java based software and, Ernest Friedman Hill created the name "Jumpin' JForum Day" as a holiday. So Jumpin' JForum Day to y'all!

Last year, we used the first anniversary of our forum software to announce JavaRanch goes mobile. This year, we have some exciting new features for Jumpin' JForum Day as well. All are in the area of personalizing the ranch to your taste and showing off your interests.

1) Bumper Stickers
It isn't exactly a secret that we've been working on Bumper Stickers. After testing them for a month with the moderators here, we are ready to put them live. I currently have Eclipse , Java and vi as my bumper stickers.

Currently you can have up to three bumper stickers from a limited set. If there are other bumper stickers you'd like to see, feel free to request in this forum. Note that actually creating the bumper sticker icon greatly increases your chances of it being accepted.

2) Badges - link to us from your own site
You can now show your accomplishments on JavaRanch/CodeRanch on your own site through a custom badge. For example, Ernest's is available at https://coderanch.com/badge.png?id=52711. We ask you to link to us whenever you display the badge.


3) JavaBlackBelt/BlackBelt Factory integration
BlackBeltFactory is a community driven site for taking tests about Java. You earn belts as you accumulate more knowledge points. We now have an option to show your belt here. Expand "general information" in "my profile" and enter your BlackBeltFactory username. Then your belt color will show whenever you post. For example, I have a black belt. BlackBeltFactory will be offering contribution points on their site for setting up this integration. You'll still get points even if you set it up before they start offering the points. We look forward to seeing them linking to us as well.

4) Site Personalizations
When you are logged in, site personalizations affects how you see pieces of the site. Just go into "My profile" in the header and expand the site personalization section. So far we have:

Hide the moose - I really like the moose, but there's been a long debate in this forum about whether he is professional enough to view at work. If you or your boss want to shoot the moose, you can now hide him from view.

Show link to PM/e-mail someone on the thread page - In the spirit of reducing clutter, you can show or hide these buttons. Regardless of the setting you can go to the user page to send a PM (unless the recipient disabled it.) Note that we have change the default to hide. If you are wondering where the icons went, you can turn it back on.

Filter/hide categories of forums - Never visit the certification forums? You don't need to see them on the home page.

Filter/hide forums - Never visit a specific forum? You don't need to see it on the home page.

Ok. This isn't much right now. But it sets the stage for more personalizations in the future. We have some other ideas that are more effort to implement and didn't make January 3rd. And we are happy to hear other ideas from the community. What would you like to be able to personalize?

Other comments/questions/bugs?
Speak up in this thread!

And last but not least, the thank yous. David O'Meara did the bumper stickers and Ernest Friedman Hill did the badges. Many other moderators worked on new features throughout the year. These just happened to be the JForum Day announcement features.

[Ulf Dittmer]

Time to out myself as having a green blue belt, I guess :-)

(Update: Took a few more exams, and upgraded the belt...)

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

I should mention that BlackBeltFactory will be giving contribution points for displaying your belt here. They didn't say how many yet. It's two per month integrated for twitter so I assume it would be the same here. Maybe John Rizzo can comment on that?

[Hussein Baghdadi]

I would like to add Clojure bumper sticker (I don't if the attached image is acceptable).

[Hussein Baghdadi]

What about his unofficial Objective-C logo?

[Mohamed Sanaulla]

How do we add the blackbeltfactory information? I searched in the profile settings, not able to find where to add the user name.

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Mohamed Sanaulla wrote:How do we add the blackbeltfactory information? I searched in the profile settings, not able to find where to add the user name.

Should be the second line under "General information about yourself."

[Mohamed Sanaulla]

Ernest Friedman-Hill wrote:

Mohamed Sanaulla wrote:How do we add the blackbeltfactory information? I searched in the profile settings, not able to find where to add the user name.

Should be the second line under "General information about yourself."

In the second line I have this: ICQ UIN:

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Sorry, our mistake -- please try again now!

[Mohamed Sanaulla]

Ernest Friedman-Hill wrote:Sorry, our mistake -- please try again now!

Thanks a lot!! Working now
Pretty sad to have a yellow only aiming for better belts there

[Vijitha Kumara]

Happy anniversary JR And a Happy New Year to everyone

I'd like to have Chrome browser... Is there any general guideline for creating a bumper sticker icon?

[Jaikiran Pai]

Happy anniversary and thank you to everyone who has made these new features possible!

[Mohamed Sanaulla]

Should the Javablackbelt not link to the User profile instead of the JavaBlackBelt Site?

[Jesper de Jong]

I would like to have a Scala bumper sticker. Here is a logo.

How big do you need the logo image to be? This one is 16 x 16 pixels.

[Jesper de Jong]

Strange, the transparent background on that Scala logo looks (partly) black in Google Chrome. Here's another version with a white background.

[John Rizzo]

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:They didn't say how many yet. It's two per month integrated for twitter so I assume it would be the same here. Maybe John Rizzo can comment on that?

We'll be happy to give 2 points/month.

Thank you Jeanne for this great integration work! We'll release the same in a few days.

[Hussein Baghdadi]

I guess those are better versions:
(Not really, working on them).

[Scott Selikoff]

Here's one for Flex, 16x16

[Scott Selikoff]

Here's one for GWT, 16x16

[Maneesh Godbole]

One for google app engine

[Scott Selikoff]

Maneesh Godbole wrote:One for google app engine

Hi Maneesh, that one isn't 16x16 like the other icons. Attached is closer though.

[Vijitha Kumara]

Here are two (one with Google Chrome inside the logo and the other without it) for Google chrome...

[Hussein Baghdadi]

Both Clojure and Objective-C.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Mohamed Sanaulla wrote:Should the Javablackbelt not link to the User profile instead of the JavaBlackBelt Site?

Yes. We will fix this.

[Maneesh Godbole]

@Scott,
I missed out on the size. Thanks.

[Mohamed Sanaulla]

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:Currently you can have up to three bumper stickers from a limited set. If there are other bumper stickers you'd like to see, feel free to request in this forum. Note that actually creating the bumper sticker icon greatly increases your chances of it being accepted.

I saw a user having 5 bumper stickers. Update: user name- yashprit singh

[Rob Spoor]

I saw another one. User name is Mohamed Sanaulla.

[Mohamed Sanaulla]

Rob Prime wrote:I saw another one. User name is Mohamed Sanaulla.

Oh yeah, I was trying if it works and it gave me an error stating I can't choose more than 3. I thought it wouldn't, but it has selected all the 5

Update: Selected only 3. I think it needs to be fixed

[John Rizzo]

I just annonced the belt-moose integration on BlackBeltFactory.com
We appreciated Jeanne's very quick and professional work on that.



I'm curious to see the stats in 6 months (how many integrated profiles), but as far as I can see in our event log, it's already a big success.
A big thanks to everybody!

[Mike Savvy]

Would you like to add iOS ?

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Mike Savvy wrote:Would you like to add iOS ?

Sure! We have an IOS forum so that sounds like a good bumper sticker. I've added it to the list and you can use it now. Thanks for supplying the image. The hardest part of bumper stickers is the image. Once it exists, adding it takes less than a minute.